Out west with Stewart Granger

When you think of stars whom you wouldn't necessarily think of as doing westerns, there are any number that come to mind, although I think more stars from the studio era did at least one western at some point in their careers than you might realize. Stewart Granger, who was good enough in all those British-set costume pieces did a couple of westerns over the course of his career, including The Last Hunt.

The movie is set in the Dakota Territory in the mid-1880s. Opening titles inform us that before Europeans started pushing westward past the Mississippi, there were millions of buffalo roaming the Great Plains, although by the 1880s, hunting by both the Indians and the whites had pushed that number down to the four-figure range. Stewart Granger plays Sandy McKenzie, a former buffalo hunter who turned rancher after the hunting ceased being good and he tired of the killing. Unfortunately, there are still just enough buffalo left to stampede his cattle, leaving him in need of a way to make money.

Enter Charles Gilson, played by Robert Taylor. He served in the Civil War and decided to go west and hunt buffalo after the War because he discovered he had a taste for shooting things dead and was good at it. Charles needs a crew for the next buffalo hunt, and Sandy reluctantly joins because he needs the money. In town, they're able to find two more men to round out the crew. Woodfoot (Lloyd Nolan) is a good mule hand, while Jimmy (Russ Tamblyn) is mixed race but for whatever reason has decided he's going to thrown in his lot with the white man instead of his Sioux half.

It's not going to be an easy hunt, and not only because of the dwindling number of buffalo out there in the wild. The Sioux aren't happy that the white man has been killing off the buffalo, in part because the Sioux need the buffalo to survive just as much, if not more, as the white man does. The Sioux also have religious beliefs surrounding albino buffaloes, so when Charley kills one of those, the Sioux are really displeased. In trying to gain revenge on the Indians, Charley enters the reservation and takes a young Indian woman (Debra Paget) hostage.

The bigger issue, however, is the way that Charley likes killing and Sandy no longer does. This personality clash is going to grow bigger as Sandy gets the distinct impression that Charley is getting too violent for his own good. To that end, Sandy gets the idea that perhaps he should try to save the Indian woman by taking her away from Charley and the buffalo hunting party, but that's only going to make Charley more jealous and lead to the ultimate climax.

The Last Hunt is a competently-made movie, helped out in no small part by the location shooting as well as the assistance of the Department of the Interior who allowed MGM to shoot real footage of a buffalo cull since the herds rebounded by the time the movie was made to a number where the herds had to be managed. The color and widescreen photography really help the location shooting. Unfortunately, the story is only serviceable. It's not a bad story by any means, but there have been a lot of better western stories put to screen.